JULIE LINDAHL
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • WRITING
    • Books >
      • The Pendulum >
        • English
        • Swedish
      • Rose in the Sand
      • Letters from the Island
      • On My Swedish Island
    • Columnist
    • Editor
  • STORYTELLING
  • POEMS & SHORT PROSE
  • CONTACT

Who is afraid?

5/27/2014

0 Comments

 
PictureDifferent?
"The fear is setting in again," a friend of mine said on the phone today. I could feel my heart beating like a drum when he said it. What he meant was that people are already becoming afraid of speaking out in the new, polarized Europe where violence seems once again to be a viable political tool. The populist parties of western Europe insist that they do not use such methods, but doesn't beating someone who didn't seem 'Swedish' over the head with a metal pipe seem like violence to you? Senior members of our very own Sweden Democrat Party were caught on video doing just that. The shooting of innocent visitors outside the Jewish museum in Brussels this Sunday seemed like another extension of the Medusa, whose tentacles lash out furiously at whoever or whatever looks too different or associates itself with difference.

As the clock ticked on, it struck me that what my friend said could just as well be a description of the perpetrators. After all, behind every threat and murderous act against another group for no other reason than who they are, is a wild fear of the other. Behind this is an even wilder fear of inferiority. These are connected by the horror that the other may be better than you and therefore must be eliminated or at the very least brought to heel. If there is something that I have learned through my years of researching National Socialism
it is that the psychology of fear is not only a phenomenon of the victims. It is also most integral to the psychology of the perpetrator.

Until we understand our human fears better - are prepared to make ourselves vulnerable by putting words to them and discussing them - we  will always be in danger of turning upon another for no reason except that we are ourselves afraid. Thank you, friend, for ringing me this morning with this thought which seems a great deal less frightening this evening.



0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    See About.

    Archives

    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    June 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

JULIE LINDAHL © COPYRIGHT 2020. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Photo used under Creative Commons from stavale8099
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • WRITING
    • Books >
      • The Pendulum >
        • English
        • Swedish
      • Rose in the Sand
      • Letters from the Island
      • On My Swedish Island
    • Columnist
    • Editor
  • STORYTELLING
  • POEMS & SHORT PROSE
  • CONTACT